The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack (2 page)

“They got forks next to their plates, if that’s what those slabs are,” Delacroix pointed out.

Gorman made a noise of disgust. “Its paws are better weapons than that.”

Something snored by overhead. Lutane went back and ducked her head out for a quick look. As she ducked back in, she studied the afterimage; Terran fighters wheeled across the sky, cannon blasting at Khalian patrol boats. But underneath them, Terran grav floaters moved. She risked another peek, and saw a floater drift over the rooftop across from her, where the sniper had fired from. His rifle stuttered, giving Lutane a hard smile; the weasel didn’t lack guts. But his machine gun wasn’t going to do much good against the floater’s armor plate.

The pilot wasn’t taking any chances, though; his own guns spoke. They stopped, and Lutane held her breath. Then an amplified voice boomed down, “Sniper cleared. Take the street.”

“Up!” Lutane barked, and her troops scrambled to their feet and jogged out. Lutane looked back and gave the cowering featherheads a mock salute. “Sorry we couldn’t stay.” She pulled the door shut as she followed her troops.

The floater drifted ahead of them, firing as it went.

“Don’t think he’s doing everything for you,” Lutane called. “There’re still windows.”

Sobered, the platoon sprinted out, dodging from doorway to doorway in a staggered, always moving line. At its head, Ranton ducked into a niche and yelled in surprise as two rifles barked. Then a Khalian toppled into the street, and Ranton staggered out, hand pressed to his side, eyes bulging.

Lutane dashed up and caught him, lowering him back into the doorway and howling, “Medic!”

“They’re following close, Lieutenant,” Belguire called. “They’ll have you in a minute or two, Ranton.” Lutane ripped his shirt open as she yanked the anesthetic bulb from his belt and shoved it into his hand. “Spray the wound with that. The bleeding’s steady; you’ll last till they’re here. Good luck.”

Her answer was a grimace of pain, and she dodged back out, frog-hopping from doorway to doorway, helplessness clawing at her gut. She wouldn’t know whether or not he’d made it till an hour or two after it was all over. With a mental effort, she put it behind her and dodged for the next doorway, glancing up at the rooftops as she did. Ahead of her, the array of antennas loomed larger, closer.

* * *

Close up, the half-timbered building seemed to loom over them; Lutane had to remind herself that it was only three stories high. Three streets debouched onto the plaza surrounding the building; they were in the central one.

“Grelli; take your squad over to the left-hand street and set up a covering fire,” Lutane ordered. “Jollin, take your people over to the right.”

The two sergeants nodded and turned back to the alleyway, beckoning to their squads.

“What’ll the rest of us do, Lieutenant?”

“What do you
think
we’re going to do, Olerein?” Lutane snapped. “Have a tea party, of course!”

Olerein’s face set into a regulation mask, and Lutane felt a moment’s anger at herself for letting go like that—but it had been a dumb question.

Gunfire broke out from her right, Grelli’s position. Thirty seconds later, Jollin’s squad cut loose. Muzzle flashes showed at third-floor windows.

“All right, hotshot!” Lutane turned to Olerein. “Get those snipers!”

Olerein’s eyes narrowed. He dropped to sitting position, rested his elbow on his knee, took deliberate aim, and squeezed off a shot. The windowpane shattered, and the platoon whooped with glee. Then stucco dust geysered next to another window, and the pane broke on the third, as Grelli and Jollin got their own snipers working.

“Stay here and pin down that middle window, Olerein!” Lutane snapped.

“Wha . . . ! Lieutenant, I . . .”

“Do it!
Everybody else—
now!”

Lutane dashed out, sprinting in zigzags toward, the big central door. The last two squads followed close. Occasional ricochets rang to either side of them, but the Khalian snipers didn’t dare stick their heads out far enough to take proper aim.

Lutane jerked to a halt three feet in front of the door and started pouring automatic fire into the lock. Her squads slammed up right behind her and started stitching the hinge side.

“Hold!” Lutane cried. “Back!” She readied herself and slammed a kick into the lock. The door crashed down, and she sprayed the doorway with bullets. Answering fire from inside filled her ears with racketing, but her squad leaders ducked out to add their fire to hers. Pain blazed in her left arm and she knew she’d taken a hit, but braced her elbow against her belt and held the trigger down with her other hand.

Then the hammering stopped, and Lutane ejected the clip with a curse. She slammed in a new one just as the gunfire inside lessened, and her squad leaders leaped in. The move startled Lutane, so she was a step or two behind them, her squads streaming in after her.

Gunfire erupted from their right, and Lutane screamed, “Down!” as she threw herself prone. Soldiers screamed and fell behind her, and she cursed as she fired at the dim, elongated shadows lurking in a small, square room—they’d given her a sucker punch; they’d slacked off their firing to make her think she’d taken out all of them. Then, when her squads were in a point-blank range, they’d cut loose with everything they had.

It would be all they ever had, she decided grimly, as she thumbed down to semi-automatic and started picking targets. The Khalian in her sights jerked and fell; so did its mates, as her squad cut them down. The air was filled with their almost supersonic death cries, thin whines on the edge of hearing, tearing human heads apart . . .

Then the whines stopped. Automatic doors clashed closed, and Lutane leaped up firing at the heavy portal where the little room had been. A dozen automatics joined hers, and the door turned into a grating. “Cease fire!” She bellowed.

The entry hall went quiet.

“They got away,” somebody snarled.

“Just make sure they don’t come back. Sergeant Murghesh, set a guard on that door.” Lutane looked around her, counting dead furry bodies. There were ten of them—and six of hers.

Enilho knelt over Kazruitin, setting a stitch-strip over a raw hole in her breast, then spraying it with plastic skin. Lutane felt a sympathetic ache and moved toward them. “You gave her anesthesia?”

Enilho nodded. “First thing, Lieutenant—the whole bulb.” He finished spraying the plastic flesh, set the container back in her belt, and folded the slit uniform blouse back over her chest. “She’ll last till the medics get her.” He thumbed the beacon on her belt, and it started blinking.

Lutane nodded, feeling her heart sinking. “Any other casualties who aren’t dead?”

Belardin shook his head. “She’s the only one who didn’t go right off, Lieutenant.”

“Seven down.” Lutane hefted her rifle. “Let’s make it worth it to them. Clear the stairs.”

Soldiers started dragging Khalian corpses off the steps.

“Hold still, Lieutenant.” Murghesh ripped away Lutane’s sleeve and pulled an anesthetic shot from her belt. She sprayed the wound, then peeled back the edges to inspect. Dimly, Lutane felt the pain, but it wasn’t her arm it was happening to. “Clean wound,” Murghesh said. “The bullet went through, and it just missed the artery.” She slapped a patch on the underside and sprayed in the anesthetic. It smarted a little, but the bleeding stopped. Murghesh slapped a patch on the top. “Maybe we should call you a medic.”

“All right, so I’m, a medic.” Lutane twitched her arm loose impatiently. “I’m good for a few more rounds, Sergeant—and I have some troops to avenge.”

“Thought you already had.” Murghesh glowered down at the Khalian corpses. “Stupid bastards! They got what they had coming.”

“Not so stupid.” Lutane frowned. “They gambled and lost, that’s all. They suckered us in. When their mates on the stairs were dead, the ones in the lift stopped shooting. We figured they were all dead, and came in. When we were inside, the rest cut loose. But if they didn’t get most of us in, the first few seconds, they’d had it—and they knew it.”

“But they made it up in the lift!”

“No—the
lift
made it up,” Lutane corrected. “I very much doubt there was anything left alive in it—and if there was, it sure as hell can’t do any fighting.” She rubbed her temples. “Still, we can’t know that. We just have to figure they reinforced the guard up top.”

Guilt shadowed Murghesh’s eyes. “We shoulda waited for your call, huh?”

“Yeah.” But Lutane was glowering up the stairs. “But as you said, it was a stupid move. More than stupid—it was suicidal.”

Murghesh shrugged. “They must have figured they didn’t have a chance against us any other way.”

“And they were right—there were just too many of us for them.” Lutane scowled. “I’d have tried their trick, too, suicidal or not.” She stared down at the corpses.

“Something wrong, Lieutenant?” Murghesh asked carefully.

Lutane pointed. “Only two of ‘em are wearing bandoliers.”

Murghesh followed her gaze. “That mean they were officers?”

“No, it means they were soldiers.” Lutane pointed. “The other ones are only wearing armbands.”

Murghesh shrugged. “I heard the Khalia weren’t big on clothes, anyway.”

“Yeah, but they need some kind of rank insignia—and that’s all these ones had. They were reloading out of those boxes of clips, there.” Lutane pointed. Murghesh looked and saw plastic cases stacked along the edge of the stairs. “Then what were the rest of ‘em?”

“Communication technicians. They only had two guards stationed here, so the signal corps had to take defense stances as soon as the alarm went up.”

“Comes to the same thing—all Khalia are soldiers.” Murghesh shrugged.

“Yeah,” Lutane muttered. “Kinda makes you wonder if there’re any Khalian civilians anywhere.” She had a brief, dizzying vision of newborn Khalia marching past with rifles on their shoulders.

Murghesh shrugged. “This is their home world. They’ve probably got more hidey-holes than a honeycomb. Nice to know we took ‘em by surprise, though.” Then Murghesh’s eyes widened as she caught the implication. “That mean we got ’em all? That there’re no more Khalia upstairs?”

“No.” Lutane nodded at the corpses, her eyes hard.

“Khalia do things by dozens, and only eight of those ten bodies belong to the building.”

“Four more stationed upstairs?”

“Right.” Lutane lifted her rifle with a wince. “Only four—but they’re cornered, and they know they’re dead. They’re going to be trying to take as many of us with them as they can.” She started up the stairs. “Let’s get them.” She jumped back a split second before the stairs exploded with a hail of bullets.

“Lieutenant! How come you’re still alive!?!” Murghesh was white as a sheet.

“Cause I was pretty sure they were up there. I would’ve been, if I were one of ‘em.” But Lutane was frowning up the stairwell, her brow creased in thought. Stairs . . . there was something subtly wrong about that, about the fact that the building had stairs. But what?

She shrugged the thought aside. There was a little matter of a battle, here.

“How the hell do we get through
that?”
Bonor grunted.

“We don’t.” Lutane stepped back, slinging her rifle.”

“Lieutenant! How about the lift?”

Automatically, Lutane shook her head. “We’d open the door and find ourselves staring down a pair of rifle barrels—that is,
if
they didn’t manage to turn off the power and strand us between floors.” She turned to Murghesh. “Sergeant, hold this door with your squad. If anything comes down, blast it.”

“Yes sir.” Murghesh frowned, but she took up station, rifle leveled at the stairs—a gaze leveled at Lutane. “But what’s Nol’s squad doing?”

“Going up the outside.” Lutane turned to the door, nodding to Nol. “Let’s go, Sergeant.”

Nol herded his people outside, excitement flickering in his eyes. Lutane wished the rest of his squad looked the same. For that matter, she wished
she
did.

She stepped out to see Olerein’s rifle leveled at her. When he saw who it was, he dropped his sights as though a marlin had taken his bait. “Lieutenant! What . . .” Then he remembered what might be behind her, and his rifle swept up again.

“At ease.” Lutane stepped up to him: “Take off your booster pack and give it to Monsan.”

Frowning, Olerein unbuckled’ his pack and swung it around. “Whatever you’re gonna do, Lieutenant, you need me along. I’m . . .”

“ . . . the best shot in the platoon, and I need you here to make those weasels keep their heads down,” Lutane finished. “Don’t talk, Olerein.” She turned away to the rest of his squad. “Doyle, Brill, Canche, Folar! Give your packs to Nol’s squad!”

Reluctantly, the soldiers helped their mates into the booster packs. Nol already had one, of course-they were standard issue for officers and NCOs. But only half of the privates had them; HQ hadn’t planned on whole squads having to lift.

“Shouldn’t my squad go along, Lieutenant?” Olerein asked.

Lutane shook her head. “There’re only five windows on that top floor, Olerein. Two soldiers to a window, that’s all we need. You just make sure the bastards don’t lean out to fire down at us.”

Olerein grinned like a mountain wolf. “They’ll stay down, Lieutenant.”

“We won’t.” Lutane looked up at Nol and his squad.

“Spread out all around the building. I’ll take four troops up to the two windows on this side.” Lutane pointed up. Nol followed her gaze, nodding. “You take six up on the far side,” the lieutenant went on, “but don’t fire until
after
you hear our burst stop.”

Nol frowned at her, puzzled. “Just do it,” Lutane grated.

“Yes, sir,” Nol said stiffly, and strode away toward his sixty percent.

Lutane watched him go, simmering. Who cared if he was angry or not? As long as he followed orders.

Nol bawled at his squad, and Lutane waited, chewing at her gut instead of her lip. At least ulcers didn’t show when you were out for R & R; that was some consolation.

“Ready,” Olerein told her.

Lutane nodded. “Up!” She pressed the pressure patch between her breasts, and jets roared as lox and hydrogen ignited, sending the squad up in a cloud of mist that wreathed the tower. Not the safest way to travel, Lutane thought dizzily, but effective, effective . . .